scott_eaton5

Yeah, it's basically multiple bw layers where color is applied in processing. None of that dye coupled fuzziness to get in the way of micro contrasts. In Kodachrome's defense it did have a distinct look, especially the super sharp 25 asa version. This compared to existing lot of still in production print films that laughably don't look much different than bland VPS III which they are based on. Can we trade boring wedding film's for bringing back K25, or will that mean porta fans will need to learn proper metering? :-) Oh yeah....i scanned some old Kodachrome trannies for a relative a couple weeks ago, and used my dSLR and macro. Results were superb and easier than Ekatchrome or my old drum scanner. Kodachrome was a pain to scan with classic scanners, but my 60D nailed them and likely any dSLR.

The photographic universe considers Tri-X and D-76 a legendary combination. However, I've never really cared for the combo and found it rather grainy and sooty when it comes to middle to highlight transitions and don't like it for portraiture. One of the utter few strengths of TMAX films is that shoulder transition. Xtol tames Tri-X grain a bit, the tonality is different. Flatter mids as I recall. Worth a shot though. My ultimate favorite developer with Tri-X though became Microdol-X. I found I could push Tri-X to EI 640-800 in Microdol-X and match if not better the grain in D76 1:1 while still keeping a nice highlight roll off. I know a lot of old time press shooters that wouldn't touch D-76 and kept Microdol as their standard. The pyro developers will obviously tame grain. Then there's XP2 on the C41 side, but it's a totally different tone structure than conventional B&W.

Are we getting neg flex during exposure causing the softness? While not as critical as 35mm neg flex caused by heat often has more to do with softness than lenses. I remember testing a Componon-S, El Nikkor and Rodagon some years ago and we couldn't tell the difference in 16x20 prints from techpan. Neg flexure during exposure was a far bigger variable. Longer focal length lenses (75mm, etc) do tend to show slightly better optical properties wide open than shorter focal lengths, but it's slight. DIY'ers snagging up enlarging glass and using them for macros...yup. Get them while you can.

You can get away with the flatbeds for 120 work, but I've yet to use *any* flatbed (other than horrendously expensive Scitex units) that can pull adequate sharpness from a 35mm frame to do anything other than post low rez images. The Epson 600 and Canon 9000 are all < 2000 ppi, and that just produces 35mm scans with mushy grain, if visible at all. Big reason you're seeing so many dSLR's with macros being used instead. The good news is you can get away with 1500ppi and 120 because there's enough film area to make decently sized scans. Rodeo_Joe : Epson knows the difference, but their marketing dept assumes consumers don't. I have 6k x 9k scans from RG-25 off my old Howtek drum, and you can see every molecule. If they're going to lie, at least be entertaining about it I say.

There's a local tulip gardens with acres and acres of flowers in May, and you need either ritalin or a heckuva lot of self control to focus on one shot. As many thousands of shots I've made I like this crop the best. When I pull back and get all the fields it just looks like any other field of bright flowers. Also shows how well Provia 6x7 could convey warmth if processed correctly contrary to it's rep.

Since it's next to impossible to get the film pundits to post work even close to the same zip code as what the mods pull out as their favorite digital shots each month you can see why the anger is there. "My box of kodachromes is better than that digital junk where you took 3000 shots to get the right one". Ok, lets see them. {insert nasty, cliche' response about how film is craft and digital is imaging}. It's the anti-digital guys attacking because digital shooters don't care. Not the other way around. A poster in this thread said recently "I enjoy film". So what. I enjoy hanging with my GF and not fiddling with Fixer and reversal chemistry. I have work I hand printed all over C-suites in the city back when I did fine art wet lab printing, and I don't care. Photography ultimately involves sharing images,...That's what we do in most of the topic forums here, except for, you know, the film based ones.......It's like reading posts from people who hate computers and the internet, but need to share that via a computer and the internet. If you enjoy you darkroom so much and exposing film, then go back to it. Trust me...the hipsters taking HP5 to Walmart need your help more than we need convincing exposing film and the feel of your wind lever is more important than sharing the final image. This, in respect is a contributing factor to the commoditization of commercial photography. The demise of magazine and press print combined with immediate availability of online image archives has seriously changed the landscape of commercial photography. A friend of mine who owns a successful Ad Agency gripes about this all the time. 20 years the problem was getting a decent stock image and fighting with photographers. Now since film isn't inhibiting creativity and getting in the way the problem is choosing the perfect image from hundreds of candidates.

If you can justify the expense of the gear because you are selling enough product, then go for it. If you think you can justify the price of a metal line because you think you can sell enough product I think it's a bad business decision. Metal prints (I haven't personally done the process but watched it closely at my lab) have no margin for error. Any piece of dust or dirt causes imperfections in the final print, and sizing has to be perfect. You also have o keep an inventory of the metal around, and often bigger labs can buy it in quantity keeping the prices down.

To further what Rodeo_Joe said, picking a brand of conventional B&W film, shooting it, then sending it to a lab to be processed in an industrial line and then scanned with a Fuji Frontier with the usual default tone destroying auto leveling and halo inducing USM will make your friend feel more angst than less.

The clip should provide enough tension to hold the film, but not enough to be a barricade. Has the clip corroded to the middle axle or something? I dislike plastic because of the reasons above, but then again I literally rolled several hundred reels of 35mm and 120 per week so it became second nature. IMO, 120 is easier with stainless than 35mm because 120 is easier to center. I'd rather load 120 on stainless than 220 on dip n dunk racks anyday.

That's because most labs are under processing it to keep their control strips in line. Provia when given proper extended development is warm and rich and has a far longer color gamut than Ektachrome. Ektachrome has a bit longer density range but turns strong colors to smudge. Dye coupled E6 film isn't that much technologically different than c41 to manufacture, so it's not a big deal. Just more difficult to process. I just don't get the history revisionism with Ektachrome. Fuji killed it...not digital. Of all the chromes I have archived the only ones that stand out are 6x7 Provia and Kodachrome 25 in 35mm.

This is why I switched to dichroics :-) The real gymnastics come when you are using graded paper, and you are stuck between #2 and #3 which was a common issue. Do you try to 'beef up' the v#2 image with slightly decreased exposure and 'hot' developer' or subdue the #3 paper with weak developer? Also, most multigrade papers have an order like this; grade 1 1/2, white light with no filter, grade 2, then 2 1/2, 3 etc. Pulling the filter might do it.

Was messing around with a 8x neutral density filter trying to get waves crashing against the rocks to turn into fog. That didn't work out so well, but the tonal graduations that showed up are kinda cool. Feng Shui baby. [ATTACH=full]1241808[/ATTACH]

Can I politely ask why not just use HC-110, 1:31 (dilution B) as a single shot and not have to deal with these issues at all? Or ID-11? Yes, they are different developers, but produce very similiar results. HC-110 produces slightly sharper grain to my eyes while D-76 has a bit better solvent effect. Otherwise, the average joe messing with B&W isn't going to see a difference, and a bottle of HC-110 syrup will last longer than you will keep interest in this hobby. Mix half an ounce of HC-110 with 16oz water - done. No need for working dilutions or anything else. It sits on the shelf until you need it. I keep reef tanks, and mixing up salt mixes brings back the same annoyances with D-76 and Dektol powder. Dektol was tougher to replace as a robust paper developer, but neutol in liquid form complimented Kodafix nicely. No powders...no worrying about mixing powders, and they can sit on the shelf until needed.

Or chill the paper and developer? Saw a press photog do this one time. Needed longer exposure time for a burn and dodge on RC, the community darkroom was +80F so dektol tank was warm, and he couldn't stop down because his eyes werent that good and he needed a bright image. He kept going to freezer for paper...couldn't figure out why.

Panalure, when it was fiber based was glorious stuff. I used to have a client that brought me 4x5 Vericolor negs of corporate head shots, and printed on Grade 3 Panalure and hand toned they were stunning. 110 and Kodak disk were a nightmare to handle commercially. The film area was so silly small that your lenses had to be constantly focused or the grain got mushy fast. Manual optical printing or scanning was the only way to get results from them. Disk cameras had the notorious habit of under exposing, and underexposing print film with such a small film area only exacerbated the grain issue. If you could over expose print film about a stop in these small formats they would print decently as long as your printing system was tack sharp.

During the 60's as I recall there were prototype film loading systems that Kodak played with where film was developed in the cartridge (not cassette), but I'm pretty sure it was a motion picture type system much like studios used before magnetic videotape took over. Also, the film had a take up system like 126 / 110 did where it was rolled to one side, and then back. This was how the agitation occurred. I don't recall details of the whole system, but have seen pictures of it from time to time.

Kubrick was meticulous on terms of cinematic framing and how he worked the elements of a scene to his vision. He preferred to have the camera and actors tell the story and not his editor either. Drove a lot of his actors nuts with retakes, but he was a perfectionist. I knew he was a photohrapher, but first time I've seen his work. His framing with still work matches his cinematic work, and it's all superb.

Plastic reels, right? With plastic reels film tends to randomly lie against the grooves so that vortex marks aren't as pronounced as stainless. I'm still surprised were seeing this with c41. Since the streaks are dark im suspicious this is a bleach issue. Developer streaking produces lighter regions than the surrounding base. Bleach issues cause a cyan shift in those areas. Providing we rule out bleach step issues I strongly suggest anybody using small tanks to slow down their inversion speed and rotate the tank aggressively in your hand while inverting. This helps reduce edge vortexing.

Again, what's the big deal with Acros? It's just another Tmax clone with even less density range to save production costs on silver and produce a sterile tone range. Delta 100, tmx 100 and Acros can all roll off the earth for all I care because they are all more similar than different. Seriously...how many middle tones of muddy grey do you need? FP4 smokes smokes Acros...period. Look at the recent examples of FP4 posted here and why are we crying about Acros? Spare me the reciprocity argument. If you can't calculate 50 or 100percent exposure increase then use the calculator on your phone. Kodak and especially Ilford are producing better conventional b/w materials and have commited to the market. Fujifilm produced Acros to leech of the Tmax/ minilab market where big yellow didn't have a sales rep. This should mean more sales for Kodak and Ilford and strengthen their positions.

Another point I want to make is warranties on drives don't mean the drive is more reliable. It simply means you are paying for the warranty. Yet another argument I have with account reps when a client is trying to save money. It makes little sense to me to buy an expensive drive with a cadillac warranty when I can buy two drives with a basic warranty for the same price and keep one in a box ready to go. If you want to pay for a third party tech to replace a bad drive with 4 hour support windows than so be it - your'e paying for the potential labor - not the part. At least call it what it is (cough Dell / HP). I try to RAID 1 desktop systems when I can for clients where any potential down time will be disruptive and they have a heavy local application install. Problem is with the proliferation of SSD most people don't want the extra expense of two SSD's in their desktop. At least backup your main system drive to something. Again, software that does this is free for desktops.

With changing bags you can never be sure if they are completely light tight, and aside from polar locations it gets night every 24 hours in the geographic U.S. Turn the bathroom light off, turn the hallway light off, throw a towel under the door, and wind your reels in comfort. Not sure why that's difficult.

I managed a really good fine art b/w dept and we were pretty good at handling custom times for oddball b/w film's. Still, tmz presented unique problems and we eventually had to send customers elsewhere. Biggest problem was processing time. Tmz at EI 3200 is really finicky about developers and requires obnoxiously long developer times. Twice as long as tmy 400 as i recall. It also requires suitable developers to keep fog low, and while tmax developer is near ideal for tmz its not a common commercial developer because of its high price. No big deal if you run it by hand, but a pain in the neck if 99% of your customer base is using tmy/tmx, youre running d76 1:1 or a clone, and now you have this roll of tmz that requires it's own run. I don't like changing bags either. Closet or bathroom works fine, and then wait for night to turn adjacent room lights off as well which insures it will be really dark. No rule that says your changing location has to be daylight proof. Wind at night.

You lose a lot of the nuances when scanning neg film including issues with the scanner including noise, mismatched profiles, etc. Commercial labs that use scan to print workflows are injecting their profiles, mandatory sharpening algorithms, etc into your image. Remember that a film scanner is a digital camera. Provided you have properly exposed negs and a good lab optical prints do the best job of reproducing the nuances of why you are shooting film. Scanning yourself is the next best option. If we were talking about transparencies it's an entirely different argument.